


you'll never know what hit you

by callunavulgari



Series: Dark Month Collection [61]
Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Curses, Ghosts, Ireland, M/M, Supernatural Elements, Witches, legend of hag hill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 06:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20887841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: "C’mon, ghost,” Shane urges. “Make all my dreams come true. Fuck me up, fam.”All around them, the world is still.Shane cracks an eye open and squints at him. “Did it work?”





	you'll never know what hit you

**Author's Note:**

> Day 3 of October, with like... an entire hour to go. Today's prompts were: outside, old ghosts, two can play at that game, transformation, distrust, loss, and the legend of hag hill. 
> 
> I didn't actually know what the legend of hag hill was until I googled, and I'm still not entirely sure if there's secretly another legend and another hag out there somewhere, but the Loughcrew Cairns is what google had for me, so that's what I went with. Look it up. The cairns are actually pretty cool. I'm also super mad because in trying to figure out how long a flight would be from LAX to Ireland I found that round trip tickets to Ireland from California is like $470. From Ohio it would be like a grand, easily. 
> 
> This is the first time I've dipped my toes into the Buzzfeed Unsolved fandom and I'm kind of frustrated that this is going to be so raw, but let's be real, I don't actually have the time for a full beta before midnight, so if you catch any glaring errors, please point them out. Also. There is cheese. There is fluff. There is... less spook than I was aiming for. Here's to hoping you enjoy it anyway!

Going to Ireland is a fan’s suggestion. Up until Ryan got the message, he’d never even heard of the legend of hag hill. He spends an entire night curled up on his couch with a bag full of cheetos and a few beers, and ends up in a dizzying wikipedia spiral.

When he manages to pull himself out of it, it’s half past four in the morning and his shirt is covered in cheeto dust. He’s pleasantly tipsy, and when he collapses into bed that night, his dreams are haunted by images of grave hags soaring through the night sky, boulders the size of his entire body tumbling from her apron and into the chasms below.

When he wakes up the next morning, his mouth tastes gummy and he’s unpleasantly bloated, but he’s got his pitch.

He doesn’t think anything will come of it, of course. Buzzfeed is great, but he’s pretty sure even they’ll draw the line at sending him and Shane to Ireland. Sure, there was the London Tombs episode, but flying international isn’t cheap.

Turns out, they think it’s a great idea. They want season six to be bigger, better, and honestly? They’re running out of material in North America alone.

So that’s how Ryan ends up half asleep at LAX on a Monday morning, bags nestled at his feet, and a tired looking Shane at his side, mindlessly scrolling through his feed on twitter.

“I blame you for this,” Shane tells him once they’re on the plane. The TSA had confiscated his coffee, and Shane had stubbornly refused to buy a replacement once they were past the security checkpoint. Which means that Shane is tired, grumpy, and all elbows as all six plus feet of him attempts to get comfortable in shitty airplane seats.

“It won’t be that bad,” Ryan tells him, fighting the urge to get out his laptop. He’ll just have to turn it off again for take off, so he does without, fidgeting whenever Shane’s knee nudges up against his. “It could be fun. C’mon man, haven’t you ever wanted to go to Ireland?”

Shane grunts and pointedly flops over, so that his face is pressed up against the window, breath fogging his own reflection.

Ryan takes that as his cue to pretend that Shane doesn’t exist for a few hours, and settles back into the seat himself, eyes on the people around him. Fortunately, there are no crying babies and one of the flight attendants is a drop dead stunner. Her lips are bright red, her flaxen hair perfectly coifed around her ears. Her uniform is pressed and neat, and clings to all the right places.

He watches her talk down an uncomfortable looking elderly woman for a while before he realizes he’s being a creep, and closes his eyes.

The flight isn’t half bad, as long as it is. Fourteen hours in the air, an hour stuck on a layover in Toronto. Shane grumps his way through Toronto, following along after Ryan like an incredibly tall, heavy-lidded puppy, but manages to emerge from his exhausted stupor somewhere over the Atlantic.

Ryan watches Shane smack his lips and look around himself lazily. He scratches at his collarbone, mussing the fabric of his shirt.

“Take a picture,” he mumbles, slanting his eyes toward Ryan. “It’ll last longer.”

Ryan snorts at him and grins, knocking their knees together playfully. “I’m just surprised you’re alive.”

“I’m alive,” Shane drawls. “_Surprise_.”

They spend the next seven hours of their flight alternating between games of I-Spy, watching in-flight movies, and purchasing the stupidly expensive wi-fi so they can dick around on their computers. Ryan does a little more research, because he’s nothing if not thorough, and when they land in Dublin, they spend about an hour at the car rental place before they’re well and truly on the road.

It’s an hour from Dublin to the Loughcrew Cairns, and they spend it in fairly comfortable silence. Ireland is very, very green, and Ryan spends the hour watching the hills roll by and listening to Shane stifle yawns.

The hotel is nice. A lot like the dozens of other hotels they’ve been to over the last few years, crisscrossing America looking for ghosts.

“At least it’s not haunted,” Shane tells him, tossing his bags down onto the floor. He immediately claims the bed closest to the window, and Ryan thinks about fighting him for it, but honestly? He’s tired. He’s jet-lagged. It’s five in the afternoon but feels like it should be four in the damn morning. He just wants to lay down and go to sleep.

Shane watches him, one eyebrow raised. When he realizes that Ryan’s watching him back, he wiggles them, and makes kissy noises. He flops his hands back in forth in what Ryan’s pretty sure are supposed to be aimless grabbing motions. It mostly just looks like he’s trying to do the worm.

“C’mon, boo,” Shane coos, fluttering his eyelashes. “Let’s snuggle.”

Ryan snorts, and flings his own bags down, locking the door behind him. He crawls into his own bed, ignoring Shane’s dramatic little sigh of disappointment, and closes his eyes.

The crew doesn’t get here until morning. And it’s a full day after that until they start filming. He plans to spend his first twelve hours in Ireland sleeping like the dead.

They take the walking tour with a handful of other tourists a day and a half later, get some great shots of sprawling green hills and blue sky to set the mood. Ryan spends most of the day talking to their guide. Getting a local’s perspective is important, so they make sure they get him on camera a few times, walking them through the history of the place.

He’ll likely go through most of what the man’s telling them in the editing process, but it’s nice to hear some of it from someone who knows the history better.

Buzzfeed pulled some strings and got some poor fool to agree to let them come back after dark, when all of the tourists have gone home, so most of the day doesn’t actually count. It’s gorgeous, and they get to see the rays of sun light up the cairns. There are some great shots, and he’s already putting it all together in his head, leaving room for the pieces that they don’t have yet.

“Loughcrew’s name in Irish is Sliabh na Callaí meaning ‘Hill of the Witch’ or ‘Hags Hill,’” Ryan tells Shane excitedly, casting long looks over his shoulder at the camera as he and Shane plod along. The sun is going down in the background and the sky is positively on fire. It’s going to look great. “The name of the hag was Garavogue, known locally as An Cailleach Bhéara. This witch or hag may have had her origins in the Celtic goddess Buí, whom we encounter at Knowth in Brú na Bóinne.”

“You sound like a trip advisory guide,” Shane calls over his shoulder. Ryan cheerfully flips him off out of the camera's line of sight.

“She was a moon goddess,” he continues. “An earth mother, a supernatural figure responsible for the landscape, placing large boulder in rivers and creating rock formations on hill sides.”

Ryan turns around so he’s walking backwards, hands behind his head so he can better grin in the camera’s direction. “Legend has it that in order to rule Ireland, the witch had to perform four feats of great strength, leaping from hill to hill with boulders in her apron. She did this three times, only as luck would have it, on the fourth and final hill she missed the jump and fell, _tragically_ breaking her neck. The great cairns you see here are said to be created from those boulders, tumbling free of her apron as she soared through the night sky.”

Shane snorts. "Majestic."

“Legend _also_ says that under that fourth and final hill is where the hag was buried, and some even say that she haunts these ancient tombs still…”

When Ryan turns away from the camera, Shane is grinning down at him, perched on a rock a few feet up the incline. “Does legend also say that she trips poor dumb Americans who are dumb enough to walk backwards up a rocky incline?”

“No,” Ryan says, and sniffs. “I’m graceful.”

Shane barks a laugh. “Ha!”

“I am!”

“Well, oh graceful one,” Shane says, gesturing to the gaping maw of the tomb behind him. “We have arrived.”

The cairns really are gorgeous. He’d been inside earlier with the camera crew, mostly because they were pretty sure the camera wouldn’t be able to pick up all the details at night, but Shane had abstained, citing that he wanted his initial reaction on camera to be genuine.

Now, it’s hard not to laugh watching Shane duck inside the archway, all six plus feet of him folding in on himself so he doesn’t knock his head on a rock.

“Huh,” Shane says, and squints at the five thousand year old artwork decorating the walls. “Neat.”

The throne though, is what Ryan's been most excited about. It’s situated on the north side of Cairn T, and yes, sure it’s a glorified rock, but it’s also _magical_. Supposedly.

“What’s the local legend about this thing?” Shane asks, hopping up onto the throne easily and spreading out, eyes on the night sky. He looks good. He always looks good, but Ryan likes him best like this, out here with the moonlight shining down on them and the camera catching all his best angles.

As Ryan watches, he blinks, and turns to look at Ryan, puzzled. “Ryan?”

Ryan clears his throat. “The locals say that if you make a wish while sitting on her throne, the witch will grant it.”

Shane gives him a wicked smile and hums a few bars of Genie in a Bottle. Ryan chokes out a laugh, crossing the space between them until he’s leaning up against the side of the throne himself.

Shane closes his eyes. “I wish, I wish with all my might, please dear god, let there be ghosts here this night.”

Ryan holds his breath.

“C’mon, ghost,” Shane urges. “Make all my dreams come true. Fuck me up, fam.”

All around them, the world is still.

Shane cracks an eye open and squints at him. “Did it work?”

Ryan wheezes, and with one hand, reaches up to smack him. Shane grins at him, unrepentant, and shrugs.

“Worth a try,” he says, and hops down off the throne.

The rest of the trip is fairly boring. They take a few more shots here and there, including a particularly heart-stopping trip in the dark to the next hill, when it sounds like there’s something following them, which turns out to just be JT.

“Well that was a bust,” Shane tells him when they’re boarding their plane home. He throws himself down into the seat next to Ryan, groaning happily and wriggling into it. They were able to upgrade their tickets to first class for the flight back to the states, and it might be out of pocket cost, but it’s worth it to see the utter glee on Shane’s face at the even slight amount of extra leg room.

Ryan shrugs. “I don’t think it was. It was neat.”

Shane gives him a flat look. “But no ghosts.”

“No, but-”

“No jump scares.”

Ryan bites his lip.

Shane goes on, a gleaming light in his eyes. “No, well, anything really. Just a whole lot of rocks and some stupid old legends.”

“At least we got to see Ireland,” Ryan offers.

Shane rolls his eyes. “If I wanted a Guinness, I could have ordered it down the street.”

“Ugh,” Ryan says, rolling his eyes. “Just go to sleep, you buzzkill.”

When they get back to the states, Shane goes home and sleeps for twelve hours. It’s a sleep so deep that you don’t even dream, just a fleeting sensation of sheets and blankets before you’re part of the void.

When he wakes up, he's a goddamn ghost.

He doesn’t realize it at first. To start with, he wakes up.

He goes about his normal routine, stumbling into the kitchen to get the coffee started before he goes off to piss. Pets and feeds Obi. Tries not to drown himself in dishwater.

It’s when he’s shuffling back into his bedroom to grab his pants and a clean shirt that he realizes that his body’s still in bed where he left it.

Staring at his own bedhead from outside of his body is an odd experience, and he spends several long minutes watching his chest rise and fall before he lets himself tentatively approach the bed.

He pokes his body, prodding himself in the cheek with one trembling finger. His head lulls to the side, responding to his touch like it would any other living, breathing human being.

“What the fuck.”

Shane stares at his body some more.

“What the _fuck_.”

It doesn’t take him long to realize that no one can see him. His uber driver speeds off after ten minutes of him waving, jumping, shouting. When he tries the bus after that, the driver doesn’t stop to ask for his fare, and the only reason that he doesn’t end up spending the trip with a lap full of forty year old man is because he’s quick enough on the draw to get his ass up and into the aisle before he sits down.

He doesn’t fare much better at the office. He shouts at Devon. He hops in circles around Sara. He grumbles disbelievingly at Curly, but by that point, it’s sinking in.

He fucked up.

He _fucked_ up.

If he gets out of this, he’s never going to taunt a damn ghost ever again.

“Fucking witches,” he murmurs, plopping himself down on his seat and putting his head in his hands.

When Ryan gets in an hour later and settles into the desk next to his, Shane stares at him hopefully. Silent.

Please, he thinks.

“Anyone seen Shane?” he asks a passing intern, and when the intern shakes his head Ryan blows his cheeks out like a chipmunk and sighs. Reluctantly, he slides the second coffee he’d been carrying onto Shane’s desk.

“Guess he’ll have to deal with cold coffee,” he mutters, and pokes his computer awake.

When Ryan edits, he’s basically a zombie. When the headphones are on, Ryan’s gone. Shane has literally had to get up and round the desk to wave in his face before he’s surfaced before.

So for about an hour, Shane just watches him. Ryan’s got an entertaining face. He grimaces, he smiles, he scratches his cheek. But never once does he look at Shane.

Around lunchtime, he emerges from his trance. Gets up. Stretches. Glances at Shane’s desk and frowns.

“Are we sure nobody’s seen Shane?” he asks Sara, but she frowns apologetically and shrugs. “Damn. We were supposed to shoot the outro today.”

“Maybe he’s sick?” she offers, but Ryan’s already got his phone out, tapping away at the screen.

Shane’s pocket buzzes.

_you sick, man?_

_No_, Shane types, staring at Ryan as he does so. But Ryan shows no hint of noticing a phone hovering in midair over Shane’s desk. _I’m right in front of you._

Ryan blinks. Looks around for a minute, brows drawn together in a look of confusion.

_liar_, he types back. _if you want me to bring you soup or something, let me know._

And then he pockets his phone.

Shane thinks very hard about screaming. About chucking his phone at Ryan’s face or dramatically sweeping the computer off his desk. He thinks about stripping naked and getting up on his desk and dancing the macarena.

He does not do any of those things.

He waits until the end of the day, and then he follows Ryan home.

Ryan’s house is a little apartment on the other side of town from his. It’s smaller than Shane’s, and a lot more empty. Where Shane has bookshelves and cookware, Ryan has gym equipment and hot pocket wrappers. Where Shane has a cat and a couple plants, Ryan has a goddamn lava lamp and an empty fish tank - empty, because all of his fish are fucking dead.

“C’mon man,” Shane tells him. “Just see me. C’mon. I will let you give me shit about this for the rest of my goddamn life, just notice me.”

Ryan does not see him. He flops down on his couch and queues up netflix automatically, pulling out his phone as he does so.

Shane’s phone buzzes. _you sure youre okay? you havent complained about phlegm all day._

_Ryan_, Shane types back. _I am RIGHT in front of you._

Ryan snorts, then takes a moment to look around himself nervously.

_real funny, man_

_NOT JOKING._

_all right, ill play along_. Ryan taps, a small smile flickering on his face. _what am i wearing?_

_Black jeans. Red shirt. You wore it to work last Thursday and you’re probably wearing it again because the new intern said you looked good in red. You made a dumb Star Trek joke about it._

Ryan blinks down at himself, startled. He takes another look around, squinting suspiciously. This time, he actually heaves himself up off the couch and checks the coat closet, then peeks his head into the kitchen.

_funny_. Ryan types out when he circles back to the couch. _where’d you rig the camera?_

_No camera. Not a joke. Think the ghost cursed me._

Ryan’s frown deepens, and he actually looks a little upset when he replies. Shane is watching over his shoulder as he types, so he gets to watch in real time as Ryan starts and stops typing again and again.

He finally seems to settle on: _this really isnt funny anymore._

_I’m not laughing_. Shane sighs, and scrubs a hand through his hair. Being a ghost is fucking exhausting. _Look, if you don’t believe me, go to my apartment. There’s a key under the mat. I need to check to see if my body is still breathing anyway._

_keeping a key under the mat is how people get murdered_, Ryan taps back, but he’s already getting up to shove his feet back into his shoes.

_Thanks, man,_ Shane types, then follows him out the door.

  
Ryan’s pretty sure that Shane’s fucking with him. But he goes anyway, because he’s fucking pathetic. The key is under the mat just like Shane said it would be, and the knob turns easily in his hand.

The apartment is cold and dark, and when he reaches over to flick on the lights, Obi is there waiting for him.

“Hey buddy,” Ryan says, and stoops to pick the cat up. The cat purrs, rubbing all over him when Ryan scritches under his chin. “Wanna help me find Shane?”

Ryan’s phone buzzes.

_i’m in the bed_, is the ominous response.

Ryan swallows, but he can’t help the flare of heat at that. He bites his lip, dick twitching a little in his pants. The hallway to Shane’s bedroom is dark and Ryan wouldn’t put it past Shane to give him a jump scare.

_naked????_ Ryan types out, cheeks red.

_You wish,_ Shane tells him. Then, seconds later,_ just come see._

And a moment later - _please._

The floorboards creak as Ryan heads down the hallway, setting the cat down as he goes. Obi beelines straight for the bedroom, which helps settle the jangle of fear in his belly a little. Still, the apartment is too quiet. Ryan’s always liked Shane’s apartment. It’s homey, which is more than he can say about his, but tonight, it’s cold. Bleak. Freaky.

The door isn’t closed. Ryan flicks on the lights and there, in the middle of the bed is Shane.

He’s lying on his side, still wearing the clothes that he’d left the airport in. Ryan swallows.

“Shane?” he calls, creeping forward.

His phone buzzes in his pocket.

_I told you_, the text reads. _Not a fucking joke._

  
Ryan pulls out all the stops. He jumps on the bed. He slaps him. He sings a couple rounds of the song that never ends. He licks his finger and sticks it in Shane’s ear. If he had the spirit box, he’d probably turn it on and put it right next to Shane’s pillow.

The second time he slaps Shane, his phone buzzes again and when he pulls it out, it says, _Please stop slapping me._

“What the fuck,” Ryan hisses and tears out of the room. He checks every fucking closet. Every bathroom. Behind the shower curtain. In the food pantry. On the deck. And when he comes back around to Shane’s room, Shane is still lying there in the same place, looking for all the world like he’s sleeping peacefully.

_Believe me now?_ His phone says.

_okay i don’t know who the fuck this is, but if shane put you up to this, just know that the joke is NOT fucking appreciated._

His phone buzzes three times in quick succession. Shane doesn’t move an inch.

_Not a joke._

_I told you._

_Please, Ryan._

Ryan takes a deep, calming breath and presses the call button. The phone rings twice before it picks up.

“Listen, motherfucker-” he starts to say, then stops.

On the other line, there’s just static.

He swallows.

“C’mon Shane,” he pleads. “This isn’t fucking funny.”

The sound warps, the static getting louder, and then, more muffled than anything they’ve ever gotten out of the spirit box, he hears something.

“What?” he asks. His palms are sweating.

“Ryan,” he hears. It isn’t clear. It’s half garbled and sounds like it’s coming from the worst corrupted sound file he’s ever come across, but he’s pretty sure it’s his name. He licks his lips again, looking down at Shane.

He’s still horribly, horribly still.

“Shane?” he asks, his voice creaky with fear.

“Not. a. Joke.”

Ryan sits down on the bed next to Shane and breathes. In and out, nice and even.

“I swear to god,” he says. “If this is a joke, I want you to know that I am never ever going to talk to you again.”

“Not. Promise.” The static hisses, and the call drops.

A second later, he gets another text.

_Ghosts get awful cell reception, I guess._

“You’re not a ghost.”

_Oh yeah? You sure about that? The fact that I’m looking at my own body would suggest otherwise._

“You’re breathing.”

_Okay, so I’m in a coma._

“Fucking hell.” He drops the phone onto his lap and for a moment, just sits. Obi jumps up onto the bed next to him and starts purring heavily, twisting his way into Ryan’s lap.

“All right,” he says. “So you’re a ghost. Or whatever. What should we do?”

_You’re the expert on this._

Ryan barks out a laugh. “I am not the expert on how to react when your friend turns into some kind of invisible ghoul. How are you using your phone, anyway?”

_Dunno. When I pick something up, it’s like it doesn’t exist. Nobody else can see it. You didn’t notice that that coffee you brought me was half empty when you threw it out?_

“Thought I drank it on accident while I was editing.”

He closes his eyes. Christ. He’s been looking for ghosts since he was a kid, and this is what he fucking gets? His best friend cursed because he can’t help poking at what he shouldn’t.

“You should have never sat on that damn chair,” he says.

When he opens his eyes again, the cat is staring unblinkingly at the spot next to him, looking up into the air like he’s expecting someone to pet him.

“Shane?” he asks. “Where are you?”

_Right next to you._

He jumps. He can’t fucking help it.

“All right,” he says. “Have you tried touching anything? Alive that is.”

_I pet Obi this morning._

Ryan nods, staring down at the cat. “Okay. Try to touch me.”

_You sure?_

He laughs. It’s not a happy sound. “Trial and error is the only way we’re gonna get through this.”

_All right._

_You ready?_

Ryan nods, steeling himself.

And gets… nothing.

“I don’t think this is worki-”

And then he feels it. It feels like nothing at first. A prickle of the skin, like there’s source of static nearby. And then, cold, icy finger tips sliding up the nape of his neck. He shivers.

_You feel that?_

“Yes,” he says, and the touch gets firmer, like the hand is curling around the back of his neck, cradling his skull. He leans back into it and is surprised when he gets a sense of pressure. He giggles nervously. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

_Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain._

“My best friend is a fucking ghost,” he tells Shane. “I can do whatever the fuck I want.”

They talk about it for a while. Ryan has to leave the bedroom, because after a while, it starts feeling weird to be sitting next to Shane’s unconscious body. He makes a bowl of cereal and eats it on Shane’s couch, the cat curled up in his lap, and his phone in hand.

“Should we get you to the hospital?” he asks around a mouthful of Cheerios. “What if you need to be on life support or something?”

_Not yet,_ Shane types back. _That can be Plan C._

“Okay,” Ryan says. “What’s plan A and B?”

_How do they wake people up in the stories?_

Ryan flushes, squeezing his eyes shut. “I am not fucking kissing you.”

A silence. And then, _Why not?_

“Just,” Ryan sputters. “Because.”

_You can say no homo first if it makes you feel better._

Ryan hisses. “That would not make me feel fucking better.”

_You’re seriously not even going to try? Not even for science?_

“Look Shane, you’re a ghost. Not sleeping beauty.”

_I could be._

_You don’t know._

_Most of the curses involving witches ended with a kiss waking the person up._

“That’s Disney. In the real stories, most of them just fucking died.”

Harsh.

Then, _Look, if it makes you that uncomfortable, I’m sorry, but I still think we should try._

Ryan sighs, and sets the cereal aside. “You swear you aren’t joking?”

_You are literally talking to an empty room and I’m responding. I am not joking_. When Ryan continues to hesitate, Shane adds,_ It’s one kiss. It’s not going to hurt you._

“You sure about that?” he mutters, but pushes himself off the couch anyway, approaching the bedroom warily.

Shane’s just lying there. The prospect of kissing him should be exciting, but instead, all Ryan feels is a low, curdling sense of dread. He takes a seat next to Shane’s body on the bed, and then, because he can, lays down next to him, until they’re face to face. This close, he can count Shane’s eyelashes. See every freckle. He swallows and licks his lips, hesitantly sliding a hand up to cup Shane’s jaw.

Behind his closed lids, Shane’s eyes flutter.

His phone buzzes, and Ryan pulls it up to glance at it.

_One kiss._

Ryan sighs and throws his phone to the side. Says, “You’re spoiling the damn mood.”

And then he leans in, and kisses him.

It’s… exactly what he’d expect kissing a person in a coma to be like. Shane’s lips are slack, unresistant. They don’t move against his. They’re dry and honestly, his breath is kind of rank. It’s the least sexy kiss that Ryan has ever, ever suffered through, but his heart still gives an unexpected jolt anyway.

He doesn’t know what he’s expecting when he pulls back. For Shane to open his eyes and yell, surprise? For him to smile and kiss back?

None of that happens. Ryan pulls away and Shane is still just lying there. His shoulders slump.

“Sorry,” he murmurs.

His phone buzzes, but Ryan can’t bring himself to check it yet. He just… lays there. Unmoving, studying Shane’s face like he’s never going to see it again.

When he first met Shane, he thought he was a little funny looking. There was something weirdly charming about the angle of his jaw, the lopsided way that he smiled sometimes, the creases at the corners of his eyes when he laughed. But he had big ears and was too tall, and sometimes when Shane wasn’t paying attention his resting bitch face made him look like a fucking serial killer.

He touches the corner of Shane’s jaw again, stroking gently for a moment with his thumb. His face twists and he feels the hot burn of tears prickle at the back of his eyes.

His phone buzzes again.

Ryan sighs and gropes across the sheets for it with his free hand.

_It’s okay_, the first text reads.

The second one asks, _Why didn’t you want to kiss me?_

“Leave it, Shane,” he mumbles, turning away from his phone with a groan. Unfortunately, that means he’s back to staring at Shane’s stupid face.

The phone buzzes. Insistently.

_Seriously though, why? I know I’m not your type and all, but it’s not like I’ve got cooties._

Ryan groans and rolls over onto his back. He rubs his eyes so hard that when he blinks them back open, his contacts have dislodged a bit, making the room go fuzzy and dark with spots around the edges. He blinks a few times.

“Jesus,” he says. “You know why, okay. Just leave it.”

_I definitely don’t._

He stares at the screen, face set, and then tells it, “Because Shane, you are very obviously my type. You are so my type that half the damn internet has noticed it. There’s no damn way you haven’t.”

His phone is silent.

Ryan laughs.

“Yeah,” he says, bitterly. “That’s what I thought.”

The phone buzzes half a second later.

_You like me._

“Yeah, I like you. That is literally what I just said.”

_Oh,_ his screen reads.

And then, _Well. I like you, too._

Ryan stares at his phone, and then sits up, glancing around the room like he’ll somehow be able to spot Shane now.

His phones lights up, and Ryan glances down at it.

_Hold up, I’m gonna try something. Don’t freak out._

Ryan holds himself carefully still, and isn’t super surprised when a chill seeps through his shirt, like there’s an invisible hand wrapped around his shoulder.

And then, that same chill is seeping into his lips.

He blinks.

It feels like Shane’s hand on his neck had before. The chill. The slight pressure. That feeling that something was pressing back on you.

The cold lasts for the space of a couple seconds, and then pulls away.

His phone is silent for a moment.

_Well. It was worth a shot._

He falls asleep in the bed next to Shane. It’s not exactly ideal, but he can’t bring himself to move to the couch.

They’d decided to call the hospital in the morning, once Ryan’s gotten some rest.

Part of him thinks that it’s really because Shane doesn’t want to go yet. Ryan’s had thoughts of unfinished business and purgatory and restless spirits in his head all night, so he isn’t too surprised when they follow him into his dreams.

He wakes up the next morning with the sun slanting over him and a hungry cat kneading his chest, butting its head up against his chin.

“Obi,” a creaky voice murmurs next to him. “Leave Ryan alone.”

Ryan blinks.

He turns, slowly.

Beside him, Shane blinks.

“Well, fuck,” he says. “Guess it worked.”

Ryan chokes out a laugh. It’s a distinctly watery sound. He shudders, and under the sheets, shuffles closer to Shane, until he can feel the heat of him seeping into his ribs.

“Please don’t piss off anymore ghosts,” he mutters, tucking his head under Shane’s chin and wrapping an around his waist. He is reassuringly solid.

Shane chuckles, but it still sounds creaky and a little uneven around the edges.

“Are you kidding me?” he says. “We’re going to go back to Ireland, and I’m going to give that hag a piece of my mind.”

“That’s not even funny.”

Tentatively, Shane drapes an arm around him.

“It was a little funny.”

Ryan hides a smile. “Not even close.”

**Author's Note:**

> My [tumblr](https://callunavulgari.tumblr.com/), if you dare.


End file.
